Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T20:41:58.261Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Pre-Columbian Ball-game Handstones: Rejoinder to Clune

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Stephan F. de Borhegyi*
Affiliation:
Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Abstract

On the basis of ethnohistorical data, Clune has questioned the identification and use of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican stone objects formerly known as “padlock stones” or “sling stones” and recently designated by de Borhegyi as “ball-game handstones.” According to de Borhegyi, these stones were used by players in the Mesoamerican ball game to deflect or propel a high-arching ball. Archaeological evidence strongly supports the inference that “ball-game handstones” and such ball-game paraphernalia as stone yokes and palmate stones were used in the ball game as it was played during Early and Late Classic times (A.D. 200-900) along the Gulf coast of eastern Mexico and in the Maya area. The indiscriminate use of Spanish and other early ethnohistoric records may be misleading in the reconstruction and interpretation of cultural events that occurred centuries earlier in a variety of places.

Type
Facts and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Borhegyi, Stephan F. de 1961 Ball-game Handstones and Ball-game Gloves. Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology by Lothrop, S. K. and others, pp. 126–51. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Clune, Francis J. Jr. 1963 Borhegyi's Interpretation of Certain Mesoamerican Objects as Ball-game Handstones. American Antiquity, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 241–2. Salt Lake City.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekholm, Gordon F. 1961 Puerto Rican Stone “Collars” as Ball-Game Belts. Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology by Lothrop, S. K. and others, pp. 356–71. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Stern, Theodore 1948 The Rubber-Ball Games of the Americas. Monographs of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. 17. J. J. Augustin, New York.Google Scholar
Thompson, J. Eric S. 1948 An Archaeological Reconnaissance in the Cotzumalhuapa Region, Escuintla, Guatemala. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 574, Contribution 44. Washington.Google Scholar